WASHINGTON – A U.S. airstrike against an Islamic State training camp in the western Libyan city of Sabratha, which killed some 60 ISIS trainees and a Tunisian ISIS militant last week, prompted a strong protest from the internationally recognized Libyan government in the eastern city of Tobruk, according to a new report in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
The Libyan parliament filed a formal protest, saying it "strongly condemns" the airstrike because it involved no "coordination or consultation with the interim Libyan government."
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However, Pentagon spokesman U.S. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis told G2Bulletin that there was indeed prior consultation and coordination and that the United States will continue its airstrikes against ISIS locations.
Davis said that he wasn't aware of any "fallout, per se" from the U.S. action but said that the attack was an "operation in coordination with international law and with the knowledge of Libyan authorities."
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The Obama administration has been hesitant to launch major attacks against ISIS in Libya until the United Nations could help broker a unity government between the two major factions fighting to control the country.
However, ISIS militants have been streaming into Libya as they escape the aerial bombing in Syria and Iraq. They are now estimated to number more than 6,000 fighters, and growing.
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"Nobody wants to see Libya on a glide slope to the kind of situation that already engulfed Syria and Iraq," Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said last week.
See the rest of this report, and more, at Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
The dispute with the interim Libyan government raised the question of how such a conflict might lead to the U.S. and other Western government efforts working in the future with Libyan officials in the difficult effort of uniting various clans and jihadi militant groups throughout the country.
In October 2011, Western powers ousted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who had united them all.
"Any interference, similar to the one that has taken place, will be considered an open and flagrant violation of sovereignty of the Libyan state and international law," a statement from the Libyan government said.
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It added that "any military or political interference into Libyan affairs should be performed in a legal way through parliament and the newly formed government."
Then the statement blamed the very international community that set up the interim government "for the worsening of the domestic economic and social situation, as well as the security situation that contributed to the spread of these organizations in our country," referring to ISIS.
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